Saturday, November 19, 2005

Pusan, South Korea - Farmers, unionists, and other anti-globalization and anti-Bush protesters fought police in the streets outside of the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit meeting in South Korea where leaders of the 21 Pacific Rim countries met to endorse the World Trade Organization (WTO) and discuss other international issues. Demonstrators attacked riot police with projectiles, molotov cocktails and long heavy poles and partially dismantled a wall made out of shipping containers, which police were standing on, by attaching ropes to it and pulling. At least eleven police officers were injured and had to be hospitalized after falling from the containers. Police used water cannons and chemical sprays to hold back demonstrators and threatened to drop water from a helicopter. Earlier in the demonstration, two farmers killed themselves by drinking herbicides to protest neo-liberal trade policies enforced by the WTO which they say are killing farmers.